There is a new liquid “nutritional” product out on the marketplace that caught my attention. Now, it didn’t catch my attention because of a revolutionary compensation plan (it’s a copy of a couple of other companies). What caught my attention is the product.

584 Responses to “ASEA Scam?”

Dear Kiala,
It is sure easy to be a arm chair critic no matter how stupid it makes "YOU" look !!
YOU MUST BE SMARTER THAN THE TOP SCIENTISTS THAT ARE STUDYING ASEA.
Good thing there are double blind studies proving what the people that are "actually using" Asea are saying…Asea works !

ASEA Double-Blind Study FAQ

Q. Who conducted this ASEA Double-Blind Cross-Over Study?
A. This research took place at the North Carolina Research Institute, a collaborative entity involving seven universities (Duke, UNC Chapel Hill, NC State, UNC Charlotte, NC Central, NC A&T State, UNC Greensboro, Appalachian State). The research was led by the Appalachian State University’s Human Performance Laboratory under the direction of Dr. David Nieman. Dr. Nieman and his team of Ph.Ds. are renowned for their rigorous research into the effects of supplementation on exercise and exertion.

Q. How was the research conducted?
A. The research team selected 20 highly fit cyclists, then randomized them into two groups of 10. Using doubleblinded techniques in which neither the athletes nor the researchers knew which group received ASEA and which received a placebo, one group drank four ounces of ASEA each day for seven days, while the other drank equal amounts of placebo. At the end of seven days, both groups undertook a 75-km cycling trial. Blood was drawn immediately before the trial, immediately after, and one hour after. After a washout period in which the athletes drank neither ASEA nor placebo, the crossover portion of the research took place. Again double-blinded, the original ASEA group now drank the placebo for seven days, and the original placebo group drank ASEA. At the end of the seven days, both groups did the same 75-km cycling trial, and blood was drawn just as before.

Q. What was used as a placebo?
A. The answer to this question is extremely enlightening, especially if you’ve ever heard someone say that ASEA is just salt water. In the research that was conducted by the Human Performance Laboratory, the placebo was salt water! In other words, the research compared ASEA to salt water and found significant and substantial differences, so there is no way anyone can ever say that ASEA is simply salt water.

Q. What were the results of the ASEA Double Blind Cross Over Study?
A. The researchers expected to see some difference in metabolite shift between ASEA and the placebo. However, they expected to see those shifts AFTER exercise, since most researched supplements express metabolite shifts due to the combination of supplement and exercise. To their surprise, they found that athletes who drank ASEA experienced a significant shift in metabolites PRIOR to exercise. In total, researchers found a shift in 43 metabolites simply from drinking ASEA, even before they began to cycle. The results were so extraordinary that Dr. Neiman said, “When I saw it, I couldn’t believe it.”

Q. What are metabolites?
A. Metabolism is the name we give to the chemical reactions that take place inside our cells in order to sustain life. Metabolites are the molecules that participate in our metabolism cycles. They are very small molecules in the blood that shift in response to supplementation and/or exercise. Metabolomics, the study of these metabolite shifts, is the very latest tool used by researchers to understand what effects supplementation has in the human body.

Q. Why was this shift in metabolites so surprising to the researchers?
A. In this research, 108 metabolites were mapped, and so the first thing that caught the scientists off guard was that a shift in 43 metabolites represented about 40% of the total. When you consider that most supplements may shift 10-20 metabolites, the sheer number of shifts was enough to get the researchers’ attention. But even more surprising, these shifts occurred PRIOR to exercise. Most supplements tested by the Human Performance Lab express metabolite shifts AFTER exercise. In other words, most supplements cause metabolite shifts when combined with exercise. ASEA, on the other hand, caused a major shift in metabolites even before the athletes began cycling. Simply drinking ASEA caused these shifts.

Q. What do these metabolite shifts mean?
A. The specific metabolite shifts in the athletes who drank ASEA pointed mostly to a vast mobilization of free fatty acids. Fatty acids are the main source of fuel for the body, and they mostly come from fat stores in the body known as adipose tissue. Q. Free fatty acids? Why is that significant? A. When anyone, athlete or not, begins to exercise, the muscles need fuel. Initially, the fuel source for this physical effort is blood glucose and muscle glycogen. When muscle glycogen is depleted, the body shifts to another source of fuel: fatty acids from adipose tissue. The body converts triglycerides in adipose tissue into free fatty acids, which “mobilizes” those fatty acids – puts them in the blood stream for the muscles to use as fuel. What makes the research results so surprising is that even before exercise – before using muscle glycogen to the point of depletion – fatty acids are mobilized and ready to use as fuel for the muscles. The body is being “primed for exercise,” as one Ph.D. on the research team put it.

Q. What effect does this have on muscle glycogen?
A. The implication is that muscle glycogen is likely being spared by drinking ASEA. While further research is being done to confirm this, the ramifications are huge. Athletes take months to train their bodies to spare glycogen and use fatty acids as fuel. And here it appears to be happening simply from drinking ASEA.

Q. What if I’m not an athlete? Does this research mean anything for me?
A. The mobilization of free fatty acids is incredible news for athletes, but it also has meaning for the rest of us, as well. Once these fatty acids are mobilized, they will be used by the body as fuel. They are the primary fuel source for a body at rest. The body needs fuel simply to stay alive, so the freed-up fatty acids will be burned no matter what.

Q. Does this make ASEA a weight-loss product?
A. It is wrong to think of ASEA as a weight-loss product. Exercise is a weight-loss product. Proper nutrition is a weight-loss product. But that said, one very clear conclusion coming from the research is this: If you want to burn more fat during exercise, drink ASEA.

Q. I understand that the research also indicated an increase in ascorbic acid. What does that mean?
A. The research did show a spike in the body’s production of ascorbic acid post-exercise, but it’s simply too early to draw any conclusions about what this means. Further research will be done to learn more.

Q. How does Redox Signaling tie into this research?
A. Redox Signaling works on a cellular level, and its primary functions ensure the ongoing vitality of our cells, including proper cell metabolism. Metabolites are the “fingerprints” left behind during cell metabolism, an indication of the chemical reactions that take place inside the cell. This research helps reveal some of the effects of the world’s first and only Redox Signaling supplement on cell metabolism.

as a chemistry teacher, could you please just let me into the secret and tell me just one of those 16 chemically recombined products ? And if they are stable and recombined they should be listed on the ingredient list.

Dave is right. I am not sure why people like to go on and on about what they have not bothered to research and do their due diligence. I just have one question why would the Scientists like Dr. Niemen from North Carolina University and the dozen others who are by the way independent put their entire reputation on the line by falsify their very well documented research.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if before people blogged or commented they would check out the facts?

It is sad to see people writing this sort of put down of something they have obviously not bothered to check out. The independent studies are double blind placebo studies…

My Min Pin became paralyzed in all four limbs at age 15. Steroids worked slightly but
he reverted so I stopped them & then heard of ASEA & put him on it – in three weeks, he
was walking again on three legs & has done so ever since – he is now almost 18. The
fourth leg straightened out but the knee joint above his foot is still paralyzed. However,
he uses it sometimes to prop himself with. I am convinced both his lack of paralysis
and longevity are due to continual ingestion of ASEA. I give him 8 eye droppers full twice
daily.

Qwote:
"Actually, it looks like this was originally being developed as a drug! That’s why there are all those tox studies. It seems the product was originally called MDI-P, and was being developed by a company called Medical Discoveries, Inc. They were supposedly planning to submit an IND to FDA and everything. You can pull up a summary of their safety studies here. That doc has embedded links to multiple full study reports.

It may be that ASEA works for some users, but as a BioChemist, I would express caution that the information shared about 'chemical reactions' appears to be purest twaddle. Whatever ASEA contains that's therapeutic – it's not listed in the ingredients. (unless seawater is therapeutic?) And please don't try to school me on electrochemistry or voltammetry…..i actually have some insights & history. Good Luck to everyone!

Quite amazed at the onslaught from the likes of Dave Bachand (who works at ASEA), beginning with a personal attack. To paraphrase the old saying…..

Methinks he doth protest too much.

Obviously, anyone with a financial stake in a “multi-level marketing” SCAM such as this is going to do everything in their power to protect their revenue stream – as all sellers of lies and snake-oil have throughout history. Follow the money, every time.

Anyone – and I mean ANYONE – with an ounce of scientific credibility is NOT seriously going to put their reputation on the line for such poorly planned, executed, documented and reviewed trials.

All I see here are pseudo-scientific-sounding words, words and more WORDS saying actually very little. The big joke, of course, is in the name: “A Sea” – just salt water!!!

Someone is doing their very best to dazzle you with nonsense – and then make you transfer all your cash to them. DON’T DO IT.

right now the only people that can afford a product like this one is people who have the income to spare, or sacrificing other things that they can live without.
The other problem everybody seems to miss is that “products like these are not affordable for many, many people” who need or want to try it. I know $150 is half my rent (have 2 others roomies). I need it, being disabled but cannot afford such a HUGE price tag…
The price would have to come down or be prescribed where disabled and low earnings people in need like myself can use it,

Dave Bachand I am just trying Asea and feel so much better! I have this incredible energy now. and it started almost immediately, I have only been on it less than a week and I am sold. Works better than vitamins for true energy and not like coffee!!

You think this is a scam? Gimme a break. You, yea you reading this, probably eat nuthin but dead food so how in the heck can you knock the fact your whole life you have been scammed into GMO, high fructose syrup, glueten food.

Realize you were put here to contribute to the significance of what life really means.

Let the fools who sell psychopathic ways to be a cancer to his fellow humans.

Where focus goes energy flows.

And realize if it works for some – so be it.

If you ask me if it is the best thing for your body it is free. Jesus cured the ill by telling them to eat the weeds. Do your own research and see how things like KALE and DANDELIONS have more LIVING nutrition than anything you can buy that is dead and in a bottle.

You think this is a scam? Gimme a break. You, yea you reading this, probably eat nuthin but dead food so how in the heck can you knock the fact your whole life you have been scammed into GMO, high fructose syrup, glueten food.

Grow up you nagger child.

Realize you were put here to contribute to the significance of what life really means.

Let the fools who sell psychopathic ways to be a cancer to his fellow humans.

Where focus goes energy flows.

And realize if it works for some – so be it.

If you ask me if it is the best thing for your body it is free. Jesus cured the ill by telling them to eat the weeds. Do your own research and see how things like KALE and DANDELIONS have more LIVING nutrition than anything you can buy that is dead and in a bottle.

Which MLM company or drug company is paying you to say Asea is a scam?

Or are you just ignorant about what is happening around the world with Redox Signaling…

Universities are opening Redox Signaling Molecules.

100 or Redox Signaling articles are being written by researchers monthly.

More and more research is being done about Redox Signaling Molecules monthly.

What about this?
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1998 was awarded jointly to Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro and Ferid Murad “for their discoveries concerning nitric oxide as a signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system”.

You believe what you want as I take Asea to the world and help people who are suffering from health issues that are affecting their lives.

Even though this product seems to have backing and credibility, it is a privately owned company. I would prefer a product that is scientificly proven to reduce oxidative stress 4o% in 30 days and 70% in 120 days and stimulates your own body to produce 1 million:1 sod and catalase through a totally natural products (not laced with chlorine) that work every second all day every minute protecting cellular damage. And the product has over 20 Universities who have studies in process and completed, which are are not only peer reviewed, but published in pubmed.gov (a physicians bible) – and it is publicly traded so all financials are up and up and available for all. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to put something in my body that chemically changes it without some hard core evidence. And I think I have found it. And it is not ASEA.

It is amazing to read so much unsupported judgment.
First it is not like sea salt water…lol
Second, people say they drank it for 2 weeks bla..bla bla…no results.
well that wont do it. You have to absorb it thru your mouth mucus. Mouth wash for 2 minutes 2 ounces in AM and before bed both cases before brushing your teeth bcz tooth paste will interfere.
3. A spray bottle comes with the case…it’s not for your plants people. It’s to spray on your skin. It gets absorbed amazingly well by skins pores. Rashes, soars ect will go away in 2 days.
4.Anema 2 ounces is another way.
5. Vaginal shower.

If you just Drink It, might as well drink good Vodka instead.
Before bashing products please do your research…ignorance kills people.
Enjoy.

FYI you're the kind of people that get ignorant people who don't understand biology to take someones word at face value. This is salt water, salt dehydrates the body. Having no water means having no oxygen in your blood stream. No oxygen means no healing capabilities. It is all in your mind and the fact that you are spreading this disinformation around makes me feel like you have bought into the pyramid scheme which is to market and sell the product. My grandma is thinking about buying this for my mom, because she has MS. Do you realize if she would have bought this for her and she were to take it based on your consideration that her mobility could actually get worse. If this story is true its because you put your focus into making this work for you, so it did. Half of reality is perception, and your perception you are trying to spray on anything and everything is skewed, false, dishonest, or mislead.

Oh dear all these opinions – go to amazon theres a big fat book written on the salt water there has to be something to it.

I like to use this example, some of you may drink one bottle of beer and be flat out drunk others may drink 6 bottles and not feel anything

Same product different results! very simple actually – trashing companies without having tried the product is lame, every company has a 30 day money back guarantee why not you go ahead and take advantage of that ….just saying

Well, these are not only free fatty acids (plus their glycerol backbone), they are largely saturated fatty acids or their omega-9 derivatives. They are produced by endogenous synthesis, rather than from dietary sources (the lack of omega-6/3 FAs is a dead giveaway). The marketer might be hoping to claim that ASEA mobilizes triglyceride energy, but this actually shows the opposite. It suggests that ASEA increases endogenous fat synthesis! Whoops! Don’t take this if you are diabetic, overweight, or have heart disease.

“lower levels of 7 amino acids,”

Who knows what this means because they don’t tell us which AAs. It would be nice to know if they are essential or non-essential.

“higher levels of fumarate, citrate, and malate,”

These are components of the mitochondrial TCA cycle. Frankly, I’d be worried if these were elevated in the blood. It suggests that the ability to burn fatty acid energy might be impaired, which would be bad. It’s consistent with the elevated FAs. It also suggests that ASEA reduced the liver/kidney ability to clear organic acids, which would be very bad.

“lower levels of ascorbic acid…and threonic acid”

This would be bad. Smokers have reduced serum ascorbate (aka Vit C). This is because smoking generates lots of free radicals that use up the VitC. VC requirements are actually set higher for smokers than for non-smokers. Threonic acid just just a VC metabolite and consistent with the VC losses. If you are worried about oxidative stress, this would be a great product for making it worse.

“increases in aminomalonic acid”

Best guess is this is a oxidative derivative of amino acid / protein. It could be a marker of increased oxidative stress. This would be bad.

“…serum creatinine and urea.”

Both amino acid and protein breakdown products. In an athlete, I
wouldn’t want to see excessive losses.

This is an extremly small and never replicated study but significant metabolic changes MAY be happening as a result of this product – Most not desirable!

Joyce Hess – Wow. Insults, yet. last refuge of the incompetent?
PS – never having worked for a beauty academy i should bow to your superior knowledge and experience? Next time I'm at a regulatory agency (I do a LOT of consulting) I must show them this link.

No I haven't tried it. As stated – I came to the thing with an open mind and read the mumbo-jumbo and shook my head. Free Country. If you think it works for you…..then good for you. Even a blind hog gets lucky and finds a truffle sometimes. http://www.lazymanandmoney.com/asea-scam/

lazy man is exactly that: a lazy guy making money off writing scathing, hateful untested, anti-scientific "reviews" of non-pharmaceutical supplements. …all the while not self-testing them. What's intelligent about that? Oh, maybe just the negatively earned money from blogging…suspectfully for pharma companies. TRY the Asea yourself and be in control of your OWN true experience with it be it good or not. That is at least fair.

Dr. David Nieman appears to have one degree, DrPH and from my experience they may know statistics (at most) but I do not believe they have rigorous chemistry or biochemistry background. So maybe they were asked to perform the study, delivered some materials to use but they can not be used as a reference for the biochemistry that is going on.

Maybe those that think this is helping should order distilled water, add some salt, and ask a loved one to hide from them which they are taking.

I do not think it is necessarily a fake, just that we do not know what else might be in it (if anything).

I had an acquaintance buy a cure in China for his skin allergy because he did not want to keep going on doses of predinisone or other corticosteriods. Being a scientist, he had the Chinese medicine analyzed by a friend in the pharmaceutical industry. He found that an “unlisted” ingredient was…. prednisone.

I bet that now-a-days most if not all of Chinese medicine aimed at making men more “virile” actually contain viagra!

So maybe the water has something else in it. There is no regulation so you will never know.

Most people are terribly mineral deficient and so sea salt being high in minerals would help. So save your money and take a pinch of Aztec sea salt every day. Science is in search of factual truth and not easily indoctrinated fools. I feel great just taking sea salt and I am 70. Don't need any mom repackaging at a higher price scams. Sure it will work if you are terribly mineral deficient.

I don’t know anything about Asea, but I can vouch for ocean water having immense benefits. I used to live near the ocean and went swimming often. Whenever I did, I felt such a difference in how I felt. I felt so much better after absorbing the minerals from the water (iodine, etc). Now that I live away from the ocean, I can promise you, I feel a huge difference. That person that said that “salt water” couldn’t benefit you just…well, let’s say they need to do more research.

In answer to the lady who asked “Why would Dr. Nieman put all his credibility, etc. on the line for Asea?”

Asea paid him over $700,000 to do that, and he continues to get fat speaking fees.

Medical and scientific education and certification is expensive. A grad is often in his or her mid-30s before beginning to make decent money. Then, many start paying off loans that can run into six figures.

Once our doctor or scientist is making decent money, he often has a nice home, spouse and kids. If divorce happens, he might work just has hard to net less than half the money.

I can see a few ways to answer her question.

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